In April 2006, Massachusetts passed legislation intended to move the state to near-universal coverage within three years and, in conjunction with that expansion, to improve access to affordable, high-quality health care. In roughly the first year under reform, uninsurance among working-age adults was reduced by almost half among those surveyed, dropping from 13 percent in fall 2006 to 7 percent...

BACKGROUND A key objective of universal health coverage is to address inequities in the financial implications of health care. This paper examines the level and trend in out-of-pocket spending (OOPS) on health, and the consequent burden on Nepalese households. METHODS Using data from the Nepal Living Standard Survey for 1995-1996 and 2010-2011, the paper looks at the inequity of this burden a...

OBJECTIVE We report inequity in out-of-pocket payments (OOPP) for hospitalisation in India between 1995 and 2014 contrasting older population (60 years or more) with a population under 60 years (younger population). METHODS We used data from nationwide healthcare surveys conducted in India by the National Sample Survey Organisation in 1995-96, 2004 and 2014 with the sample sizes ranging from ...

opportunity to fundamentally change the way health benefits are structured, and to reframe the national debate on healthcare to focus on the value of health services—not on cost or quality alone. In a VBID benefit, cost sharing is still utilized, but a “clinically sensitive” approach is explicitly designed to mitigate the adverse health consequences of high out-of-pocket expenditures. By aligni...

OBJECTIVE To explore what happened to poor women in Bangladesh once they reached a hospital providing comprehensive emergency obstetric care (EmOC) and to identify support mechanisms. DESIGN Mixed methods qualitative study. SETTING Large government medical college hospital in Bangladesh. SAMPLE Providers and users of EmOC. METHODS Ethnographic observation in obstetrics unit including in...

The Commonwealth Fund Survey of Older Adults reveals that adults ages 50 to 70 who rely on the individual insurance market for health coverage pay much higher premiums than their counterparts with employer coverage or Medicare. The survey found that in 2004, more than half (54%) of older adults with individual coverage spent $3,600 or more annually on premiums. A quarter (26%) spent $6,000 or m...

background: health inequalitymonitoring especially in health care financing field is very important. hence, this study tends to assess the inequality in household's capacity to pay and out-of-pocket health carepaymentsin tehran metropolis. methods: this cross-sectional study was performed in 2013.thestudy population was selected by stratified cluster sampling, and they constitute the typic...

background provincial health accounts (pha) as a subset of national health accounts (nha) present financial information for health sectors. it leads to a logical decision making for policy-makers in order to achieve health system goals, especially fair financial contribution (ffc). this study aimed to examine health accounts in kerman province.   methods the present analytical study was carried...